Hex Away is a casual, tile-sorting game that features a hexagons theme. Although it offers stack play, the main actions the player must take involve unpuzzle rules.
Across levels, the player must clear all arrow-marked hexagon-shaped tiles, or hexes, from gray hexagon-shaped pavers on grids. They don't position the stacks to prompt the game to auto-sort matching tiles, as seen with other similar hex games. Instead, they direct the game to flip tiles across unused pavers and off the sides of a grid or through holes in the paver pattern.
The game supplies the player with a limited number of moves, which it displays in the upper-center area below the level number. It only penalizes them when they run out of moves. The player can direct a stack to hit another stack during the tile flips without any penalty.
Hex Away rewards the player with gold coins at the end of each level. The player then buys access to helpful boosters in higher levels below the grid, including a large hammer that removes a stack with a single blow and a black skull bomb that removes multiple stacks with a blast.
When the player unlocks new levels, they face additional obstacles and receive more helpful tools. For example, some levels feature one or more pillars marked with a semicircular rotation arrow attached to a pair of stacks. The player can swap the positions of two stacks to unblock arrows by selecting a pillar.